


In Remission

by gaytypo



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Despite the scary tags the scenes show her coping, Detailed trigger warning can be found in the notes, F/F, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Schizophrenia, Self-Harm, Written by someone with schizophrenia, but not graphic or like the way youre thinking of, crime family bonding, firefly catching, there is no blood in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22460662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaytypo/pseuds/gaytypo
Summary: Vespa is coping with her illness, and the rest of the crime family is there too.
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko/Vespa
Comments: 12
Kudos: 66





	In Remission

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as an exploration of my own schizophrenia and Vespa's character. I hope that non-psychotic readers keep in mind that 1) schizophrenia is not just about hallucinations and 2) schizophrenic people are usually just chilling, fully capable of love and guilt and coping without being blindly violent. The detailed trigger warnings are in the end notes.

The cabin feels especially cold that night. It's really that simple. Vespa lies in bed, like any other night, spending the usual amount of time basking in the radiant beauty of the woman lying beside her. Then, when she hasn't dozed off in a dizzy haze of affection and warmth, she turns to the other side. The mind flips to facts and definitions and anything she could regurgitate from a textbook. Surely the mind won't resist the pull of sleep when barraged with an exceptionally thorough analysis of various neurotoxins from across the solar system. 

Halfway through every noxious botanical product of Venus she can name, she gets frustrated. It's only gotten colder and she's still uncomfortably awake. Piling on blankets does nothing to assuage the growing chill.

To the kitchen, then, she decides. A warm drink couldn't hurt. Even still, the entire ship feels the same unbearable temperature. She reaches to pull her blankets closer around the shoulders, and for the first time notices her hands shaking. 

Are the blankets coming off because her shoulders also quake? Puzzle pieces start to slide together under a thin ever-present layer of panic. It's not the normal cold. 

Steel is in the kitchen. Whatever ails him, she doesn't ask. It doesn't seem to be the climate. He drinks water quietly, looking more put-together than she ever expects of him. Certainly not at such a late hour.

"Hey," she knocks on the doorframe, fighting to keep her knuckles firm and steady with the shaking. "Describe the temperature right now."

The detective startles a bit and takes a moment to examine the intruder to his private nighttime despair. If he notices her own despair, he doesn't comment on it. He simply answers, "Pretty average. Wouldn't of noticed it before you said anything."

"Cool." She returns to her room, not feeling any need to explain herself. She hears him mutter something, but for the most part he respects the comings and goings of fellow skeptics in these dark interludes of space.

Buddy stirs from her sleep at Vespa's return, ready to get up and flee at the slightest of provocation. Vespa hasn't said it aloud, but she thinks the radiation made her a light sleeper. Though, her overbearing snore remains. Maybe the years of not sleeping made her a light sleeper. It's all the same really. No difference in outcome, no point figuring out what got it there. 

"Vespa, dear, your teeth are absolutely chattering. Come here."

Vespa climbs back into bed beside her. Those loving arms wrap around her delicate frame, smoothing out goosebumps and tracing familiar scars. She pulls her close. Finally, Vespa feels the frost start to abade.

-

She is agitated. She knows that. Everyone knows that. Especially Juno, who thought it funny to fuck with her in this state. Maybe that's an exaggeration. Maybe she's just looking for things to be angry at. It sure as hell beats being worried. She hasn't said a word since Juno bothered her an hour ago, and she's not trying to change that. If Buddy were here she'd softly try to soothe her superstitions. Reassurances and feather-light touches, until given indication that more is welcome. But Buddy isn't here. She's off with fucking Ransom, Vespa recalls, not for the first time in the last few minutes. 

Buddy is charming her way into the right foyer to steal something surely not worth the effort. Vespa didn't want her to go. The two of them have been on that stupid moon before, and she would sooner kill every guard to the stupid mansion they need into than risk Buddy being recognized. But, of course, Buddy insisted Ransom will not go alone. It's an Aurinko Crime Family, after all. The sentiment that he needed backup seemed to offend him as well, which Vespa does take comfort in.

Sikuliaq chooses to interrupt her stewing at this time, a cup of tea and a roll of bandages in hand. She thinks for a second about snarling at the mere suggestion. She doesn't. She's better than that. She's trying to be.

He sets both down. "Sorry to intrude. Thought I would offer these." There is not further elaboration.

"What's with the bandages?"

"Your wrist," he points down to the increasing redness beneath her fingertips that she has no memory of placing there. "You've been scratching for a while now. Bandages are a simple means to prevent further irritation."

He's right. If a cat has an injury you don't want them to lick, you make them wear a cone. If a person has stitches you don't want them to pull, you wrap it up nicely. If a nutcase has an involuntary compulsion to itch at lingering wounds of memory, the same remedy should work fine. She wraps her wrist quietly. Sikuliaq doesn't leave, so she examines his tea.

"I'm a medic, asshole. And a fucking assassin. I smell shit before I drink it, especially if I didn't watch someone make it. What did you put in this?"

"Nothing as sinister as you're capable of, I'm certain. Only some herbs said to be calming. I can make some differently if you would like. There is honey and sugar to be added as well."

A comprehensive list of herbs that could be combined for a lethal effect easily and undetectably shoots through her head. She suppresses it. "This is fine. Thanks. Leave now."

"It is no problem, Vespa. I will let you know when Buddy is on her way back."

-

The unending jungle of this planet makes stealth a fun sort of difficulty. She wouldn't say she's impressed with Ransom's keeping up in spite of this, largely because she refuses to be impressed by his shady bullshit, but it's good to work with someone who knows what they're doing. It's why the two of them were picked for this job, after all. Buddy keeps it all in mind, from the moment she chose Ransom to the moment she assigned him with her here. Too much of what they've been doing lately is fancy party acting nonsense. Deception and flattery, forgery and hacking—all of the showy shit—it's not her wheelhouse. She's perfectly content being given what others might call the dirty work. Someone needs shutting up, and she's got a knife or two that have something to say about that. Her shifty companion without a name seems to as well. They move like they're being chased, quiet as the night they work in, but quick enough to avoid any pursuance—real or imagined.

When it comes down to blows, she gets the job done. It's what she does. She's double checking the pulse, Ransom seems to already be going for the pockets; it's a productive and easy hit. Then she's on the ground several feet away and Ransom looks at her like she's gone crazy.

The problem with that is she _has_.

"Everything alright?" he asks.

No. The words don't quite form. She starts and stops them. She reworks them. Consonants and vowels come out and some of them resemble words more than others. Angry noises really. None resemble sentences. He waits for her patiently, though he's probably wondering if it would be appropriate at this time to continue looking for valuables in the dead guy's pockets. 

She doesn't know how to describe what she saw, still. "His eyes," she tries. "They looked familiar." And she wants to say that's not it! Not just familiar. They looked like how deja vu feels. They looked like waking up from a dream and not realizing your world is wrong. In the seconds they stared up at her, she saw the first person she killed. Then her mother. Then Buddy. Then no one at all. Just, familiar.

Ransom looks back down at the corpse as though he needs to confirm that the man was indeed the pharmaceutical scientist they set out to pursue. Of course it was. Neither of them would make that mistake. He reaches out and closes the eyes with one hand, before producing a wallet with the other hand. Perhaps he was searching the body while Vespa was having her little meltdown. She can respect that. 

He announces, "I believe we have what we came for, if you'd like to depart."

She does.

-

Rita and Juno are watching some godawful stream. Vespa's tending to Juno's broken finger. She chastises him; he claims it could have been much much worse; Rita tells them to cram it because this is the 'good part' of the movie. When the two of them do quiet, Vespa notices a faint thumping noise. Weird fucking program she's chosen tonight, she thinks offhandedly, not one for streams. Her strategy of ignoring it works for a while, as is usually the case with these things. Then, as it grows persistent, and the noise makes no sense to be part of the plot, she has to find the source. Standing, she examines the room carefully.

"Um, so I'm all good, right?" Juno asks at the sudden movement. "No more bandages?"

"Is that noise coming from the box?" Vespa locks her gaze back to the only thing capable of producing such a noise in the room.

"What noise? Wait, what box, actually?"

"The—the box. Thing. The thumping noise. From the box." Vespa stops and groans, knowing she is making no sense. "The stream box!"

Rita paused the movie. Vespa's never seen her do that before. She didn't even know the pause button worked until this point. But, more importantly, the noise continued.

"The banging. It's like a fist on glass." She examines the windows. "No way there can be someone on the other side. Space is out there. I don't know what's making that noise."

Juno puts his hand back down carefully. "I don't hear it. I'm sorry."

"Want us to move somewhere else, Miss Vespa?"

Vespa wants to lash out. She wants to find what makes that noise and kill it worse than dead. She wants to yell at Juno for not hearing it and begrudge Rita for giving her That Look. If not fight and shout, she wants to run and hide and curl up in Buddy's arms and wait for the fear to unravel piece by tangled piece. And Vespa knows she could try. But instead, she takes a breath, more shallow than she's going for, but definitely something better than complete breathlessness. She continues until the breathing seems something more like deep. 

And she sits down. "Could you turn the volume up on that, Rita?"

"You bet I can, Miss Vespa."

-

Vespa hasn't gotten out of bed yet. Everyone else has been up and about, even Buddy left to her machinations when goaded enough. Everyone has responsibilities. A duty to their crew.

Captain Aurinko is probably out there now, giving orders and doing research and organizing the grandest of schemes. Jet's by her side, driver and pilot and fiercely loyal companion, ready to complete any task, any at all she asks for. Juno picks and prods at the plans, giving annoying but helpful feedback, making observations no one else could with twice as many eyes. Ransom quietly contributes, rereading the plan and checking the research and recommending any number of changes based on experiences the rest can only accept are real, no name attached to them to prove otherwise. Rita does her thing, watching streams and supposedly picking up origami, when suddenly she has the revelation that ties it all together like a movie plot and makes just as little sense as you could expect from her.

And Vespa is still in bed. She has duties. She has plants to water, injuries to check. But she can't seem to get up just yet.

-

"Sweetheart, what bothers you tonight?" Buddy whispers, barely a breath in the still air of the room.

But Vespa feels it as an intense wind, fanning the raging flame.

"It feels like it's on fire. Buddy, it burns. It hurts so fucking much, Buddy." Her voice comes out raspy, and she notices how dry and raw her throat feels. Like she's been crying for hours, using every drop of water in her body. Of course, she could have been. All that she can remember before Buddy came in was white-hot pain. The room's not aflame. There's no visible source of the intense heat. Can't hear anything crackling, either. But she smells smoke. No border between her and the pugent stench of burning, somewhere between gasoline and burnt eggs. Between the awful cloud of not-smoke invading her lungs and the layers of not-flame breaking her flesh, melting but not melting everywhere she touches, Vespa is overloaded. She can't focus on any one sensation. There's no way to delineate what's reality when the flame is covering everything. Buddy is speaking distantly but there's an entire world separating them now.

When Buddy reaches out, presumably to place a reassuring hand on her shoulder, it scalds her skin worse. It's like she just removed her hand from a vat of boiling water. Maybe a concoction of exploding plasmas from the core of Jupiter. Buddy feels like the sun in the worst way she's ever meant the comparison. She burns. So Vespa flinches back.

Some of Buddy's words do go through. She catches the words radiation and medicine. Then Buddy leaves, probably going to get something to help.

Vespa's a bit too distracted to care.

-

They have to spend the night in some shitty motel on some shitty dwarf planet out in the middle of nowhere. Jet and Buddy went off to procure some supplies and fuel. It's been a while. Vespa starts to feel the familiar agitation that comes when Buddy hasn't come back as soon as she'd like. Ransom and Rita are playing some card game she doesn't even want to begin learning the rules for. Rita's very vocal about each new development though, making it clear if she begins losing. Vespa has grown fond of her, which is why she decides to leave the room. Preventing that headache will spare all of them some pain. Besides, if she waits outside, she'll be the first to know when Buddy comes back.

Steel follows her out. He notices it himself and starts to apologize, "Shit. Sorry, didn't mean to infringe on your alone time or whatever, but that game was getting a little too intense for me. I'll just, uh, be over here."

She doesn't respond, and he doesn't push his luck. And something about the silence speaks contentment.

When Buddy and Jet left, the sun was high in the sky. Now, it creeps beneath the horizon, painting the dome above them shades of purple. The air in front of them is filled with little red lights. "Hey, Steel. Reality check."

"I see them, too. Weird fucking red lights."

"Huh."

"Should we go tell the others… or…?" He looks torn between that intense detective curiosity and his fight-or-flight response. The curiosity is winning.

"Knock yourself out. I'm gonna touch them."

"Is that, uh, smart, though? What if it shocks you? Maybe Rita can help."

"Are you smart? Shut the fuck up, Steel. I'll do what I want." Vespa walks out a few feet before seeing closer that the lights don't look mechanical in nature. "I think they're bugs."

"Oh. You think they're normal here?"

"Probably. They seem to just be flying around. No evil agenda to kill everything human-shaped." She sticks out her hand, then, close enough for the red dots to approach. One does, and she sees little wings and antennae and all the normal features of a bug. It tries to land on her palm, but the sensation startles her, and she lets out a small scream. Reacting minimally, it just buzzes away, unfettered by her shock.

Steel, on the other hand, is somewhat fettered. "What the fuck! Did it hurt you?"

"No, dipshit. It just felt funny, is all."

"What's it feel like?"

"It kinda tickles. I'm gonna catch one." He gives her the look like she's some kind of mad scientist who's gonna dissect these new creatures for sport. Altogether, she's not unflattered that people assume the worst intent from her innocuous wishes. But she is perpetually annoyed regardless. "Let a damn girl catch a weird light-up bug, asshole."

"I didn't say anything!" He grins, treating her hostility like some endearing trait instead of evidence that she might stab him again. It's taken a lot for the both of them to get to that point, she thinks. "I'm gonna go tell the others. I think Rita would love these. She'll scream more than you did if one lands on her."

The fuck off from her is silent, but very much understood.

She reaches for the nearest bug, and dust kicks up in the distance.

_Buddy_.

The Ruby 7 is a fast car. Not the fastest, but certainly not slow. Though, as its green hood careens over hills of metallic dust and around the chasms of miscellaneous space debris, she can't help but think it could be much faster. 

Maybe the nearby bugs feel her impatience take anew, as they all seem to fly away from her. She scrambles, trying desperately to catch one before they all get away. It's more difficult than she'd expect. The little bugs fly unpredictably, moving in the most bizzare diagonal lines and loops she's seen from a creature. She does catch it, though. And as Buddy, smiling and effervescent, steps out into the dusk, she cups a hand over the little red bug.

"What have you got there, dearest?"

Vespa feels herself smile. The red bugs blink back into the ether, framing her Buddy like some kind of goddess. "Come and see."

The noises of Ransom and Rita coming outside are distant to her as she holds eye contact with Buddy. Ransom probably says something along the lines of, "Ah, Jovian Fireflies! An interesting fact about them, they actually don't originate from Jupiter. The name is simply a reflection of bespoke redness," but Vespa doesn't care to hear his trivia right now.

Buddy's skin glows up close, too. But now her scars and makeup and most importantly her _grin_ are fully visible. Vespa opens her hands, a firebug immediately shooting out. She watches it fly off, up until she's pulled into a kiss. At this point, she loses track of where her bug goes off to. For a few beautiful seconds, she loses track of everything. It's just Buddy and Vespa. Vespa and Buddy.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is inspired by the Rosenhan Experiment in 1973, a study critiquing the methods of diagnosis. Sane "psuedopatients" were admitted to various mental health institutions for hallucinations (which they lied about). Over the course of their stay, they acted normally and their only goal was to take notes and be discharged. The average stay was 19 days, all but one only discharged on conditions of taking antipsychotics and other follow-up for their diagnosis of schizophrenia in remission.
> 
> Detailed trigger warnings:  
> Vespa experiences many symptoms of schizophrenia such as:  
> Hallucinations -- tactile (temperature, burning), visual (shifting faces), auditory (unexplained white noise), olfactory (also burning)  
> Minor Persecutory delusions  
> Negative symptoms (similar to depression)  
> Disorganized speech  
> Self-harm -- She compulsively scratches at her wrist enough to make it red, not enough to draw blood  
> Also Vespa kills some dude in one section. The act is not described, but she reacts negatively to the body.  
> Vespa has moments of agitation typical to canon.  
> There is one scene where she flinches away from Buddy's touch, but there is no lashing out.


End file.
